


between the weight of family and the pull of gravity

by biblionerd07



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Character Study, Drug Use, Jack Feels, Jack Needs a Hug, Overdosing, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3718597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 times Jack's father just didn't get it, +1 time he absolutely did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	between the weight of family and the pull of gravity

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Sleeping at Last's "Heirloom", which is a song that gives me a lot of Jack feels. I mean the chorus starts out with the line, "You are so much more than your father's son" so. Yeah.

He’s nine years old the first time it happens. They’re sitting in a pizza parlor after his pee-wee game, and someone comes up to ask his father for a picture. It isn’t unusual. This has happened his whole life. He knows, distantly, that his father is famous, but he doesn’t really understand it. His father’s job has always been hockey, which seems like the only enjoyable job in the world.

After the man gets his picture, while Jack’s dad is signing the woman’s shirt, the man smiles at Jack, a smile like he knows something Jack doesn’t. He points at Jack’s jersey.

“You play hockey, eh?” He asks. “Like your daddy?”

Jack doesn’t know what to say to this. He has been playing hockey his entire life, as long as he can remember. He can’t call to memory his first time on the ice, either because he was too young to remember or because he spends so much time on the ice one particular time is hard to distinguish. He’s not quite old enough to see how much weight his father has put on this situation; it seems to Jack that everyone plays hockey, don’t they, and he’s no different.

“How many Stanley Cups can we expect from you, little Zimmermann?” The man is laughing now, and Jack looks at the TV in the corner and sees his dad on the screen, younger, raising the silver cup in the air.

“You’ll be just like your dad, won’t you?” The man says, and Jack suddenly wants to cry without knowing why. His chest feels tight. Jack’s father smiles wide, proud, and claps a hand on Jack’s shoulder.

“Yes, he’s on his way,” he says. “Straight to the NHL.”

Jack will remember this exchange later and wonder why no one noticed he never said a word.

  
He’s twelve years old and captain of his youth team. His team votes him captain before his skates are even laced up on the first day of practice.

“Zimmermann,” he hears whispered around the bench.

He’s used to this. He’s been captain of every team he’s been on. And it’s fine; he’s been, in all honesty, the best player on every team he’s been on, as well. He knows it. It doesn’t make him arrogant, because it’s just simply how the world works. He plays more hockey than anyone else he’s ever played with; of course it makes him better. He’s played one-on-one with Wayne Gretzky. He just has more opportunity than anyone else.

He tells his father about being captain as they drive home from practice, a small seed of irritation in his voice that even he doesn’t quite understand.

“Well, you’re the best on the team,” his dad points out.

“They picked me as captain before we started playing,” Jack says, not sure why he’s arguing about it or why his chest feels so tight. He _should_ be captain. He _is_ the best on the team.

“Your fame proceeds you,” his dad says with a smile and a cocked eyebrow. Jack doesn’t say anything else. It’s not _his_ fame the team was relying on.

  
He’s seventeen years old and Parse’s billet father winks when he leaves the six-pack on the coffee table next to a pizza and the TV remote.

“Did you get film from the last game?” Jack’s father asks over the phone line. Jack clamps the phone between his ear and his shoulder, letting Parse slide a beer into his now-free hand and pop the top for him.

“I watched it already,” Jack reports obediently.

“And?” His dad prompts. “What do you need to work on?”

The door opens and a flood of people Jack doesn’t know comes in; girls in tight jeans and boys with backward baseball caps and noisy laughter. Parse high-fives a few of the boys and pulls one girl’s hair.

“I—” Jack loses the thread of the conversation for a moment as Parse leans in close and mouths _get off the phone_.

“Son.” His dad’s voice is sharper this time. “Did you watch the tape?”

Two of the boys Jack doesn’t know are racing to see who can chug a beer faster and a girl hooks her iPod up to the speakers to start blasting music Jack doesn’t recognize. Everyone looks so relaxed and Jack doesn’t understand how they’re sitting there without a tight coil in their stomachs. He wants to be relaxed, too. He doesn’t want the tension in his shoulders or the tight feeling in his chest that never seems to go away, no matter what he does.

“Yo, Zimmermann, are we gonna have fun or not?” One of the boys he doesn’t know laughs. Jack wants to say yes.

Jack’s dad blows a noisy breath in his ear. “Your backhand is still weak,” he fills Jack in, no longer waiting for Jack to give the right answer. “You need to watch the tape. You hesitate on the left because you’d rather take the shot on your forehand.”

“Okay,” Jack tells his father. “I’ll watch the tape again. I’ll practice my backhand more.”

“Good,” his dad says. “And make sure you’re getting enough sleep. You’re looking tired. Your mother and I are getting worried.”

“I will,” Jack promises.

He hangs up with his father and takes a long drink of the warm beer in his hand. He’ll keep all his promises to his father. But some promises are harder than others. He has to drink to get enough sleep these days.

  
He’s eighteen years old and he doesn’t mean to hurt himself. It’s just that he can’t breathe around that tight feeling in his chest and his hands are shaking and he needs that weightless, light-as-air sensation the pills give him.

He doesn’t mean to fall to the ground or stop breathing or make his mother cry.

“You can still get drafted,” his dad says, sitting in a chair beside his bed with his elbows resting on his thighs. “It was just an accident.”

Jack looks at the tag around his wrist. ZIMMERMANN, J. He is a patient and he is a kid and he is an addict and he covers his eyes with his hands and says, muffled,

“I can’t.”

“Don’t worry,” his dad says, voice low and soothing. “I’ll call—”

“I _can’t_ ,” he repeats. “It’ll happen again.”

He knows three things about himself down to his bones: he loves hockey, he hates nighttime, and he needs help. Nighttime is when it all starts to creep up on him, all the little whispers in his head, driving him to pills and alcohol and either fighting or fucking Parse to keep the whispers away, and unless he gets help he’s going to keep doing it.

“ _Wasn’t_ it an accident?” He’s never heard his dad’s voice shake like that before.

“Yes,” he assures him quickly. “Yes, it was an accident. But that doesn’t mean I won’t do it again.”

His dad doesn’t say anything for a long time and Jack doesn’t look at him. “I’ll look around for…places,” he finally says slowly. “Places you can get help. It won’t take long. You can take a season off. You’re overstressed. Next season you’ll be back.”

Jack doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t mention that he doesn’t know if it counts as overstressed if it’s how he’s felt his whole life.

  
He’s twenty-four years old and he doesn’t know what he’s going to choose. There’s so much unfolding before him, so many different futures he could pick, and he doesn’t know what to do. He’s afraid. He doesn’t want to make the wrong choice. He’s made so many of those.

“There are just so many choices,” he tells his father quietly on the phone, the tight feeling in his chest threatening to strangle him.

His father hums sympathetically. “There are,” he agrees. “But is there really a wrong choice?”

“What do you mean?” Jack asks, a little surprised. Of course there’s a wrong choice. Every choice has the potential to be wrong.

“Well, no matter what you choose, you’ll be playing hockey,” his dad points out. “You’ve worked so hard. You’re strong enough not to get mixed up in all…that. Again. No matter where you choose to go or what your teammates are doing.”

Jack swallows. He knows that. He knows he’s doing better, so much better even than last year. But he hadn’t been talking about the pills or the alcohol; he’d been talking about playoffs and championships and gleaming silver cups. His choice impacts that, the dream they’ve been working toward his whole life.

“A Zimmermann playing hockey,” his dad repeats. “What could be wrong about that?”

Jack doesn’t know how to explain that he never knew just playing hockey was enough.

  
He’s twenty-nine years old and his knee is in tatters. He gets carried off the other team’s ice after a hat trick and an assist and a few torn ligaments. The team doctor tells him he needs to get an MRI just to be sure but that he needs to move quickly; he needs surgery to keep playing and he needs the surgery quickly.

The word _if_ doesn’t come up. There is no _if you want to keep playing_ , no _or your career will end_. It’s not a choice that anyone imagines him imagining.

He’s lying on the table, pinching the bridge of his nose, when his parents walk in. They’re in Montreal, and Bitty would have come to see them but he’d been asked to give a guest lecture in New York about the intersection between food and individualism in the internet age, and it’s an important opportunity for his career. Jack hadn’t been anticipating an important shift in his own career when he’d encouraged Bitty to take the engagement. He needs to call Bitty. His phone is in his bag and it’s probably blowing up with frantic calls.

His mother pushes the hair back off his forehead, and even though he thinks he should protest that he’s too old for that kind of thing, he doesn’t.

“How bad?” His father asks worriedly.

“I have to have surgery,” Jack says. _If I want to keep playing_ , he doesn’t say. His father hears it anyway; Jack can see the fear and sympathy and hurt on his face.

Jack doesn’t know how to explain that his dreams less and less often revolve around silver cups and more often include buying a house with a big kitchen that would always smell like cinnamon and apples and a pond out back that would freeze over in winter for skating, include a new camera and early mornings with his breath visible in front of him while he captures birds in flight, include coaching a pee-wee team and hearing shouts of _Coach Z_ , even possibly, someday, include a round little body in a snowsuit between him and Bitty, chubby fingers wrapped around his own during a first skate.

But he can’t say any of that. He was always supposed to be here, a C on the front of his jersey and ZIMMERMANN stamped across the back, until he hoists that cup over his head. He’s already behind the ghost he’s been following; the middle of his fifth season and no championship under his belt.

“Can you walk without surgery?” His dad asks. “If it heals up a bit?”

“Yes.”

“Can you skate?”  
  
“Not—I can’t play without surgery,” Jack says quietly. “Not professionally. It’s alright. This doesn’t have to end my career,” he parrots the doctor’s words.

His dad smiles gently. “But it can if you want.”

Jack swallows around a lump in his throat. “Dad?”

There are tears in his father’s eyes when he squeezes Jack’s fingers. “You’re more than hockey, Jack,” he whispers. Jack sucks in a breath. He searches his dad's face to be sure he’s saying what Jack’s hearing. That tight feeling in his chest lifts as his father smiles down at him, and he knows for the first time they’re speaking the same language.

**Author's Note:**

> You guys, writing this honestly made me an absolute mess of Jack Zimmermann feels. I need to hug that boy. I was thinking about how intensely young he was when he went through everything with the overdose and the draft and everything. 18 or 19?? That's my baby brother's age! So young for so much pressure. So I was a tad wrecked.


End file.
